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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24093136">You're The Devil In Disguise, Oh Yes You Are</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders'>UniverseOnHerShoulders</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Prompt Fills [57]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who (2005)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, False Identity, Undercover</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 22:49:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,723</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24093136</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>At MI6, O finds himself face to face with one of the Doctor's pets... one who has the <em>nerve</em> to take on a very familiar alias.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>The Master &amp; Clara Oswin Oswald, Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Prompt Fills [57]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/585397</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>74</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>You're The Devil In Disguise, Oh Yes You Are</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>From the prompt:</p><p>
  <em>Clara is pretending to be the Master (for Reasons) at MI5 and meets Dhawan!Master, who can’t blow his cover as O... chaos.</em>
</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“So.”</p><p>The woman’s voice is crisp, clear and confident. In that respect, it’s no different to any of the Master’s other colleagues at this imbecilic institution, full as it is of arrogant, self-assured women with superiority complexes, but there’s a quality and familiarity to this voice that makes him look up from the tedious Excel spreadsheet he’s been compiling for the last five hours. It’s meant to be a list of MI6’s undercover operatives in Europe; in fact, he’s programmed it to calculate their average life expectancies and financial overheads, all of which he’s hidden in a locked worksheet concealed in the depths of the file. He has to pass the time somehow, after all.</p><p>Looking up and elevating himself a few inches off his chair in a bid to see over the cubicle dividers that section off each office worker in a bid to discourage chitchat – fine by him – he looks around for the source of the voice.</p><p>“I’ve told you who I am,” it snaps. “I know you have access to UNIT and Torchwood files; look me up.”</p><p>Ah, such arrogance. The Doctor had taught her well, hadn’t she? (He? They? He’s still not entirely sure; his own pronouns are so all over the shop that he isn’t in a position to judge.) There’s the undercurrent of the bossiness that the Master’s previous self had so fallen in love with, but now it just grates on him intolerably.</p><p>“What did you say your name was?” one of C’s lackeys asks with grovelling, snivelling politeness. This race! So much simmering loathing; so much barely-concealed hatred for each other, and all of it dressed up and delivered with a ‘please’ or a ‘thank you’ and a smile. It drives him mad to participate in the intricacies of it, but it’s such fun to watch; to see the way grins slide off people’s faces as their colleagues leave a room and they turn to each other and begin to exchange snide, hateful words about people who they had, seconds before, treated as a friend. It’s pathetically pleasing to see how quickly they turn on each other; he’s found a vicious pleasure in starting rumours and watching them take root. He’s turned three lots of friends on each other thus far, simply with a well-timed comment or a look. He’s set his sights on Debbie and Julie in the next-door office as his next project; they’re so condescendingly saccharine in the manner in which they treat him that he feels the bitches deserve it.</p><p>“The Mistress,” the voice says with a hint of impatience, and the Master feels a cold sense of horror creep over him. She wouldn’t dare. She couldn’t possibly be… the audacity of it… “Missy, for short.”</p><p>“Right away,” the lackey says in a slightly stunned voice, and the Master knows that he’ll have coloured with embarrassment; talking to a woman and making the associated subconscious link between ‘Mistress’ and kink that so many humans insist on forming? Well, it’s enough to make the poor chap, barely out of his teens, combust of embarrassment. Besides, despite the Master’s newfound loathing of the speaker – and, indeed, everyone on this miserable, stinking planet – he does have to admit that she <em>is</em> very pretty, in a human sort of way. Enormous eyes. The sort of face that screamed innocence, but he remembers a night on a diner-shaped TARDIS that had proven <em>entirely</em> the opposite. He smirks at the recollection now; wonders about a repeat. He can’t blow his cover, but perhaps she might take pity on the poor, baby-faced MI5 agent he’s pretending so diligently to be; perhaps he might seem naïve and hopeless enough for a pity-fuck. She’s got to still be keen on naïve and hopeless; all that time spent travelling with the Doctor, it must be an established part of her subconscious by now.</p><p>But there is, of course, the somewhat pressing issue of who she is claiming to be. Him. Well, Not-Him; Previous-Him; or should that be Previous-Her? He’s not entirely sure, so he settles with Previous-Self and hopes for the best. She can’t do that; can’t appropriate his Previous-Self’s name as her own. Why would she even need to do so? Aside from the glaringly obvious fact that she is, as far as the entire funny little world is concerned, dead; in which case walking into a place packed with as much surveillance equipment as MI5 seems a <em>very </em>poor life choice. Surely there’s facial recognition running; surely they’ll flag immediately that she’s legally deceased.</p><p>But then again, how can she be? She’s standing in front of them, walking, talking, breathing – although he’s sure that’s just an act – and very much not-dead. It could be chalked up to a computer error, but then phones would ring and the word would get out, and the speaker, he suspects, would very much like to remain dead. It’s so much easier to get things done when the universe is entirely convinced of your tragic demise; he knows that first-hand. The Doctor hasn’t troubled him since he met his seeming end on a space station; they WhatsApp occasionally, sure, but she doesn’t know the truth of who he is. If she did, she would only insist on intervening; only insist on getting in the way. Far easier to maintain the pretence and remain unafflicted by her meddling.</p><p>He’s digressed. He snaps his attention back to the impostor using his Previous-Self’s name, and she steps into sight then, and he sucks in a breath.</p><p>She’s wearing a knee-length black trenchcoat and a white blouse with a strange ruffle down the front. She seems a little taller, but he knows that’s merely a deception; tries to scan down to see her high heels but finds his way impeded by cubicle dividers. She’s wearing red lipstick and her hair is loose round her face as she strides confidently along in the wake of the poor bloody intern from the fourth floor, whose face is the same colour as her lipstick and seems entirely in her thrall. He smirks at that; she might not be a Time Lord, but she can certainly be hypnotic.</p><p>“I’m going to speak to C,” she says in a high, clear voice, rounding off her vowels in a way that removes her accent from its native Lancashire lilt and towards a crisp, Received Pronunciation manner of speaking. “And if you refuse, I’m going to vaporise half of this office. Starting with…” she looks around; sees him looking; smirks in a way that’s entirely more alluring than it ought to be. “Him.”</p><p>She points a device at him and he has to admire her gumption. It’s small and looks entirely like his Tissue Compression Eliminator; even at this distance, however, he can tell it’s not. It’s a good duplicate, but a duplicate nonetheless; still, the rest of the office falls very still at the threat and he supposes he ought to play the part.</p><p>“Please, no,” he forces himself to say, his bottom lip wobbling in his very best impersonation of a human idiot. “Please, don’t vaporise me. I’m just… I’m just an analyst, really, I’m nobody special…”</p><p>Lies, lies, lies, and he loathes himself for them, but if he breaks cover then he’s not entirely sure she won’t run and tell the Doctor everything, and his plans will be ruined.</p><p>“Really?” she says with a smirk. “That’s interesting. I like vaporising nobodies; it really clears the mind. And there’s less paperwork for the idiots around to fill in.” She turns her attention to the trembling lackey. “What do you think? Should I vaporise him?”</p><p>“I… urm… I…” the youth stammers. “I’ve explained to you… C is very busy… I can’t just…"</p><p>The Master admires his pluck. Sticking to the party line, even when one of his colleagues is being threatened with public execution.</p><p>He makes a mental note to add cyanide to the lackey’s coffee jar.</p><p>“Really?” the speaker arches an eyebrow. “You. ‘Nobody.’ Come here.”</p><p>The Master gets up with feigned reluctance, enjoying the theatre of it all. He takes tiny, faltering steps towards her, and when he finds himself in front of her, he notes with a tiny, inward grin that even in her vertiginous heels, she’s still shorter than he is. A definite advantage.</p><p>“On your knees,” the impostor drawls. “Hands behind your head. Start praying.”</p><p>He gets to his knees, biting his lip to keep himself from laughing. As he raises his hands to his head, something in the lackey seems to break, and the teen lets out a hysterical, panicked yelp.</p><p>“Fine,” he blurts. “Fine, I’ll see what I… fine, fine, please…”</p><p>“Very well,” the impostor says, patting the Master twice on the back of the head in a condescending fashion, and he fondly imagines killing her where she stands as retribution. “Pity, I was looking forward to shrinking him.”</p><p>The lackey strides away and the Master forces himself to stay in place until the woman is out of sight, before getting to his feet with melodramatic flair, shaking and shivering in a way that he’d seen several of his victims do. He brushes off colleagues’ well-wishes and enquiries into his wellbeing – hypocrites, now they notice him – and staggers back to his cubicle, where he reaches into his pocket and removes his phone, typing out a WhatsApp message.</p><p>
  <em>Just met an associate of yours at work. She put a weapon to my head!</em>
</p><p>The reply is almost instantaneous.</p><p>
  <em>What associate?! I’m so sorry!!!!!!!! </em>
</p><p>There’s a string of emojis after the words which he chooses to ignore, typing back:</p><p>
  <em>Well, she said her name was the Mistress, but…</em>
</p><p>He pauses after hitting send, and sure enough the Doctor sends back an emoji in the shape of a question mark.</p><p>
  <em>You know, having seen the file… I’d say she looked more like Clara Oswald. But she’s dead. Isn’t she?</em>
</p><p>He watches it as it sends, then watches the message’s intergalactic progress: one grey tick; two grey ticks; two blue ticks.</p><p>
  <em>The Doctor.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Online.</em>
</p><p>Then:</p><p>
  <em>The Doctor.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Last seen today at 16:21.</em>
</p><p>Ah, he thinks to himself. Any second now, Clara Oswald is about to get an extraordinarily pissed off phone call.</p><p>Grinning to himself, he gets to his feet and heads after her.</p><p>Might as well watch, after all.</p>
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